


Bloodstains

by silverskyfullofstars



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Memories, Regrets, Scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 08:49:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13050612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverskyfullofstars/pseuds/silverskyfullofstars
Summary: It’s all over him. Phantom blood, dripping over his hands, down his face, staining his close-cropped hair a rusty gold.





	Bloodstains

**Author's Note:**

> I rated this Mature because my writing got pretty bloody in this oneshot.

It’s all over him. Phantom blood, dripping over his hands, down his face, staining his close-cropped hair a rusty gold. It’s not the blood that stains someone post-torture, nor the wide splatter of a slit throat. This is as if someone took every bit of blood he’s ever spilled and dumped it over his head. This is all the lives he’s taken, all the pain he’s brought. This is his penance, his punishment, his prison.

The worst part is, it’s not even real. His face is clean, his Arrow armor (a weapon in and of itself) dark green without a trace of scarlet. But he can feel them. Wounds he inflicted, pain he caused. He knows each one - which weapon was used, which blood vessels, tendons, muscles, even which bones were damaged. He can estimate the amount of pain each would cause, and which would kill before the person even had time to scream.

He can hear them, too. He knows the sound of an arrow’s release from a bow, the scrape of a blade being drawn, the swishing sound of a staff. He can pinpoint the sound of an arrow striking armor, flesh, or bone, and knows the wet gurgle of a slit throat. He knows the way a well-sharpened blade can cut nearly soundlessly through skin, and he can hear the audible crack of wood or metal shattering bone. He has caused them all.

The blood is permanent, as real as any of the scars that cut through his own body. Arrows and knives, bullets and swords, whips and fire. All of them reminders as much as the tattoos scattered on his torso. Reminders of enemies, reminders of friends. Reminders of his own mistakes. Kills made out of necessity and mercy, but also murder for the sake of it. Revenge.

He wishes it would stop. The sounds, the memories. He wonders when he became this thing, this monster made up of the worst parts of mankind. He had always pushed too far, bending the rules of society, but now he had pushed beyond the boundaries of humanity. No human would be willing to do what he had. To bring death upon enemies, death upon friends. To carve a man apart slowly, leaving him alive to feel each nerve severed. To carve his own soul apart, burying it and leaving nothing left.

After all, that is what the blood makes him. Nothing. Nothing more than a monster of a man, reveling in the joy of death and the destruction of his soul. Nothing more than a pitiful excuse for a person, able to control every movement of his body but slowly losing his mind. Nothing.


End file.
